by Lucia Ashta
Fifteen seconds and a few uttered words later, Mulunu pounded her staff against the floor and its crowning opal lit up like a light bulb.
Mulunu gasped, surprising me. Remnants of the witch spread across the floor. And when I say spread, I mean spread. Just as I’d pictured her in my mind’s eye, she’d disintegrated into bits too small to recognize. In her death, the witch could have been anyone. Chunks and piles of gore coated the spot where she’d stood only minutes before.
This time, I didn’t look away. I forced myself to face the results of my power. Unlike with the demise of Lizbeth’s soldiers, I didn’t battle a wave of debilitating guilt. I didn’t even struggle to swallow down bile. The soldiers had been following orders, and though I liked to believe everyone always had a choice in what they did, I was beginning to understand things weren’t as simple as that. Lizbeth’s minions, as Mulunu had called them, hadn’t been carrying out their desires.
They’d been carrying out Lizbeth’s.
“Are you here only as a lure for Quinn?” Mulunu asked Irving while I processed.
“Ultimately, yes,” Irving said, sounding defeated though I’d just killed the wicked witch.
“But...” Mulunu prompted, reminding me that the two of them already knew each other.
“But that didn’t stop her from torturing me to take my power for herself.”
“So she didn’t succeed, then.”
Irving shook his head, eyeing each one of us in turn, finally settling on the mess that was Lizbeth on the floor immediately next to his cell. “Of course she didn’t. She didn’t understand love. She didn’t understand that I’d never give up Quinn, which meant I’d never break and shift so she could siphon off my power. If she became any stronger, she would’ve found Quinn sooner.”
His shoulders heaved. “In the end, she found ‘im anyway. And I couldn’t help ‘im when she brought him in, marching ‘im right past me.”
“So...” I swallowed. “So he knows you’re alive?”
“Aye, lass, that he does. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad though.”
“And why is that?” Liana asked breathily, as if she were viewing life on land remotely again, where what happened didn’t affect her directly and she could lose herself to secondhand drama.
“Ma boy fought her so hard when he saw me that she hurt ‘im, she hurt him badly.”
Even though shadows all but swallowed Irving up with the depth of his sorrow, I caught him swallowing, his throat bobbing beneath the thickness of his overgrown beard. “I”—his breath caught—“I can’t be sure he survived his injuries. She hurt ‘im terribly, right in front of me.” Fear and loss racked through him, shaking his sunken chest.
“Lizbeth would have told us if he were dead,” Mulunu said, trailing off at the uncertainty of her suggestion.
“Not if she knew she’d lost her most important bargaining chip to ‘er bad temper. That viper would say anything to get what she wanted. She’s worse than you, Mulunu—no offense.”
Mulunu scowled at Irving, her milky eyes zeroing in on him. He didn’t seem to notice, or if he did the threat of the sea witch wasn’t enough to overpower his fear of losing the one thing that seemed to mean more to him than his own life.
“You and I are going to talk,” Mulunu threatened, “just as soon as you’re back to your usual strength. You lied to me.”
“Ya, I sure did, and I’m right sorry about it. But it had to be done.”
Mulunu continued staring daggers at Irving, but he appeared too broken to care, until...
“Irving.” I turned my back to Lizbeth’s gory remains. “Quinn lives. I feel him, right here.” I pressed my hand to my chest, where my long hair trailed across my breasts, mostly concealing them.
Hope animated his eyes. “You’re certain, lass?”
“I think so. I just don’t know what state he’s in. I can’t tell that.”
“Then what are ya waiting for? Get me the hell out of ‘ere. I have a son to find.”
“He isn’t your son, Irving,” Mulunu said.
“To me he is, and that’s all that matters.”
I supposed it was.
When neither Mulunu, Liana, nor I rushed to free him, he barked, “What on earth are you waiting for? All of us to rot down ‘ere? Move it!”
Liana jumped and ran off in search of a key, careful to skirt the pile of bloody mush.
“Can’t you just use your magic to open the lock?” I asked Mulunu.
“Of course I can, but I have the feeling the fight isn’t over yet. If there’s an option, it will be better to conserve my energy. And I’d use enough of it to matter opening all these cells.”
“You mean … you mean all these cells contain prisoners?” I could barely get the words out around my horror.
“Prob’ly every damn one,” Irving growled. “Lizbeth was as greedy as she was ugly.”
“Who … who’s in here?” I asked.
“Shifters, hybrids I’m guessing from the sounds they made in their animal forms. I didn’t recognize most o’ them.”
“She got them to shift?” Mulunu asked while I gasped.
“Pretty sure,” Irving said. “It was easier. She pretty much left ‘em alone after that.”
“After she took their shifter magic for herself, you mean,” I whispered, grief plunging through my heart on their behalf.
Irving nodded and leaned his forehead against the bars. “If they didn’t have reason to hold out, they didn’t for long.”
“How many cells are there down here?” I asked.
“Far too many,” Irving whispered, his voice deep with mourning. “Far too many, lass.”
“I found the keys,” Liana announced, running back toward us.
“Good,” Irving said, urgency grumbling through his chest. “The sooner we find Quinn, the sooner we can get out of here.”
And the sooner my heart would be at peace. It hadn’t stopped hurting since I’d arrived at the top of the cliff to find him missing. I needed Quinn like I needed my heart to beat and my lungs to pull in air.
Whatever the reason, he and I were inextricably linked. I couldn’t survive without him.
At the very least, I didn’t want to.
6
Mulunu hovered behind Liana, illuminating her work while Liana riffled through the heavy key-ring laden with far too many keys. One after another, she fitted a key into the lock of Irving’s cell and discarded it as the wrong choice.
There were so many keys. There had to be at least thirty, maybe as many as fifty. That meant as many as fifty shifters rotted in cells after Lizbeth had most likely drained them of their magic.
I cast a sharp look at the remains of the witch, wishing for a brief moment that I could kill her all over again. Immediately, guilt weighed me down. Since when had I become so murderous? This wasn’t the person I was used to being. I valued the life of all creatures.
Even so, what gave one person the right to inflict so much suffering on others for her own gain? It was the same with Dimorelli, and with Naomi, and countless others around the globe apparently—many of them after Quinn and me, drawn to the allure of our one-of-a-kind powers. It didn’t seem right that dungeons like this should exist. The world on land was no less brutal than life within the ocean, where death was an everyday part of existence.
“I’m glad ya killed ‘er, lass.” Irving cut into my thoughts, his voice stronger already than it’d been minutes before. “Ya had to. Don’t doubt yerself for a second. Ya did only what ya had to do.”
I nodded absently, pulling myself forcibly from my guilt. He was right, and if I had to I’d kill her again and again if it meant keeping her from hurting anyone else.
“There!” Liana turned the key with a triumphant click and wrenched Irving’s cell open with a whine of iron hinges.
Irving winced as he began moving, then leaned against the open gate before pushing off with a nod that I suspected was meant to encourage him more than us. “Let’s go find ma
boy.”
We sidestepped Lizbeth’s remains and began making our way down the long, dark hall lined with cells. At each one, Liana repeated the process while Irving and I peered into the deep shadows of the cells, calling for Quinn. Mulunu stretched the light so we could see to the back of the cells, but soon ceased doing so. I suspected the sights depressed even her.
Bodily filth was everywhere. Lizbeth hadn’t even provided her prisoners with chamber pots, forcing them to live in their own stench. At least it didn’t seem as though they were forced to eliminate often. I saw no signs of food or water.
“Did Lizbeth feed you?” I asked Irving, my attention caught on the captive who neighbored Irving’s cell. A woman, she crouched like a wounded, feral animal, eyes skittish and constantly roving. Her hair was matted and so dirty it was impossible to determine its color. Like Mulunu, Liana, and me, she was nude.
“Lizbeth wasn’t overly concerned with our comfort,” Irving said. “All she needed was for us to survive. Beyond that, she didn’t care. Her servants gave us food and water once every few days … or something like that. I lost track of time after a while.”
“So her servants will still be in the building? Do you think they’re a threat to us?” I asked while beckoning the woman forward before Mulunu’s light traveled too far down the hall to illuminate her.
“The servants will flee as soon as they discover their master is dead,” Irving said. “They seemed unwilling. They averted their eyes from me every time as if they didn’t want to feel bad for us.”
I nodded absently, crouching down in front of the woman’s cell. Keys going in and out of locks clinked in the background as Liana attempted to fit the right ones.
“Come with us,” I told the female prisoner. “We won’t hurt you, I promise. We just want to free you.”
The woman’s skittish gaze more or less settled on me, and she took a step forward on hands and knees.
“Once we get you out of here, you’re free to return to your home and old way of life.” Though who was I kidding? From her drawn, haunted features, I doubted she’d be able to go back to the way things used to be. “It’s okay to come out. I killed the witch.”
“Really?” she croaked, barely human. “Totally dead?”
“Really. Totally dead.” I waved her forward, and she finally scampered toward me.
“Mulunu!” Irving called out.
“What is it, Irving?” Mulunu was pissed at him for betraying her, and was making sure he knew it every time she had the chance.
“Can you magick some clothes on you women? It’s highly distracting to have you all naked and running around dungeons.”
Illuminated by the glow of her staff, Mulunu turned toward us from several cells down the hall. “I don’t mind making you uncomfortable.”
Irving scowled, his frustration a bit lost in the bushiness of his overgrown facial hair. “It might make the prisoners more likely to trust us. Right now, they just see a bunch of naked lasses coming to their rescue.”
“Surely there are far worse things.”
“Just dress yerselves, will ya?” he grumbled.
She shook her head, the shells in her hair punctuating her disagreement. “Not yet. I need to use as little power as necessary until we get out of here. I sense more challenges coming. Selene’s magic isn’t entirely reliable, and you look like you’d fall over if you attempted a shift right now.”
“Fine, but don’t be surprised when the prisoners aren’t ready to trust you.”
“I doubt their reluctance to trust has anything to do with our bodies in their natural forms. These prisoners have been abused and—”
“Yeah, I know, I know. Let’s just get on with it, the sooner we put this place behind us, the better. I can hardly stand to be in here.”
“It’s all right,” I cooed to the female prisoner as she finally crossed the threshold to her cell toward freedom. “Good job.”
Immediately, she turned toward the exit … and the pile of gore that was her captor. When she started scampering off, I called to her. “No, wait! We’ll help you. Don’t go off on your own.”
But then I tilted my head toward Irving. “Should we just let her go? The prisoners will need help once they get out of here, won’t they?”
Before Irving could answer, Mulunu interjected, “She can’t go. It isn’t safe yet. My magic is prickling all over.”
“Is there something we should do to prepare for whatever’s coming?” I asked in sudden alarm. “Mulunu?” I prompted, when she didn’t answer right away.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure what’s coming yet. The energy signature is odd. Let’s just hurry up.”
But Liana was frozen with a key in her hand, eyes locked on mine. We’d never heard Mulunu say she didn’t know something about magic. I wasn’t sure I’d ever heard her utter the phrase at all, for any reason.
Liana resumed her efforts like a whip was cracking at her back, working through key after key as quickly as she could.
The female prisoner we’d released seemed aware enough to understand our discussion, and she hung back, growling viciously at the pile of mush that had been Lizbeth.
Another triumphant clink and Liana hurried to the next cell across the hall, Mulunu behind her. Irving and I moved to the neighboring unlocked cell, working to coax out its battered prisoner.
In that manner we proceeded for another handful of cells until a man came charging out of one after Liana unlocked it. She squealed in shock and jumped back. Irving moved to block the man’s path, though the prisoner’s pent-up rage was more than enough to overpower Irving in his current condition.
“Steady, mate,” Irving said, both hands up toward the wild shifter, whose head swiveled constantly in an attempt to keep all of us in his line of sight at the same time. He breathed heavily through his nostrils, like a bull. “We mean ya no harm,” Irving cooed, as if he were speaking to a wild animal. “We’re only working ta free ya.”
The shifter, his chest heaving with his upset, bowed his head and took a step closer to Irving and me. “Irv?”
“Yeahhhh...”
“It’s me, Brogan.”
A few beats passed while we all turned our attention toward Brogan. Even Liana paused in her efforts for several seconds before remembering our urgency and resuming her turns at the lock in front of her.
“Brogan?” Irving asked. “As in … little Brogie Wogie?”
There was nothing little about the man, who hadn’t yet wasted away like the others. He remained big, strong, and fierce.
Brogan stopped breathing out through his nostrils like he was about to charge us and took a few casual steps toward us instead. He chuckled, the lighthearted sound out of place in our surroundings. “No one’s called me that since I grew big enough to make them regret it. But then, you haven’t been around since then. You got old, man. I wouldn’t’ve recognized you if you didn’t look so much like your dad.”
I leaned forward with interest. Irving had a dad? I mean, surely he’d had one at some point, but the man who’d reminded me so much of the sea had been little more than a mystery … until I’d believed him dead.
“Ya look good,” Irving said. “Like the witch didn’t take yer power.”
Brogan shook a full head of bright, white hair, out of place framing his youthful face. “She didn’t. I wouldn’t let ‘er, and she didn’t like it one bit.”
“Ta think you were here and I didn’t even know it...” Eyes big, Irving hadn’t stopped staring at Brogan.
“Something’s coming, Irving,” Mulunu snapped. “Focus.”
Irving nodded. “Brogan, will ya help us find ma boy Quinn and free the rest of the prisoners?”
“There’s no more time to free the others,” Mulunu said. “We have to leave them.” She pulled on Liana’s hand, drawing the key-ring away from the lock in front of them.
“No,” I protested right away.
“Selene, we have to get out of here. Something bad is coming.”<
br />
“I won’t leave anyone,” I insisted.
Mulunu cracked: “You have to if you want to find Quinn and get out of here before whatever’s coming gets here,”
“Why can’t you tell what it is?” Liana asked Mulunu.
“I’m not sure. The energy is muddled. Or maybe it’s just being down here with all this suffering. Too many creatures’ energy mixing with my own and with whatever is approaching. Whatever it is, we need to find Quinn and leave. Now.”
When I hesitated again, Mulunu stalked toward me, bringing her light and thunderous expression with her. “I’d say we’re already out of time to find Quinn too if he weren’t so important. Get up and get moving, or we’re all goners—your precious Quinn too.”
I stood hesitantly, but nodded my agreement.
“I’ll come back for the rest of them, lass, I promise,” Irving said. “I won’t let them continue suffering.”
I brought a hand to his shoulder. “Thank you.” I really wasn’t sure I could leave them in these conditions otherwise, despite the gravity of our situation.
“Of course I’ll help,” Brogan finally told Irving. “What do you need me to do?”
“We need to find Quinn, and fast,” Irving said.
Liana was already racing down the hall, away from the light and toward the darkness, calling out his name as she went. “Quinn? Quinn!”
There was no reply, just some rustling as the other prisoners moved in their cells.
“I think I know where she might have taken him.” The stilted, dry croak had Liana halting and returning our way, and the rest of us looking toward the hunched female behind us, still crouched over the remains of her tormentor.
She cast her gaze to the floor. “I’ve been here for a very long time.” She cleared her throat and continued. “If he isn’t here, there’s one other place he might be.”
“Where?” I asked. “Please tell us.” I wrung my hands in front of me. I had to get to Quinn before whatever Mulunu was worried about had the chance to arrive.